PROMPT: Use the repeating line of there are / there is… (what are the things that are in your life?)

Press Pound to Skip by Nathalie Vachon

There are crocuses in my back yard, a clump of purple that keeps grabbing my attention, stopping me in my tracks. There are flowers that shouldn’t bloom yet; the one I bought two years ago whose name I have forgotten is already showing pink buds. There are leaves that need raking. There are thoughts in my head that need to be put to rest.

There are worries; a basement of filing cabinets with sterile walls and florescent bulbs that hum in the background of my life.

There are shoulders that have a hard time falling, releasing, resolving. There are messages on the answering machine that I have not answered. Press 1 to listen. Press 7 to erase. Press pound to skip. I skip over so much and there are emotions piling up. Seems I can’t feel them fully, can’t face them straight on so I press pound to skip…

PROMPT: Using two lines of a poem written by Maya Angelou to Oprah Winfrey for her 50th birthday (Ignore no vision… and increase your spirit), each writer was to create two lines of inspiration and encouragement to create a group poem. We picked numbers randomly to decide the order and here is the final poem:

Ignore no vision which comes to enlarge your range And increase your spiritFearlessly, be your own championAnd tend fiercely to your sweet and tender dream shootsAllow softness to grow your heart openAccept tininess, accept flaw as the beginnings of power

PROMPT: This prompt came from the group scanning a set of books and picking out titles or phrases that jumped out. The phrases that Sabrina wrote from: ‘a tourist in your own town’ and ‘where is home’.

Where is She Today – by Sabrina Dias

Where is she today? Sometimes as she walks up her street of nine years, this thought pops into her head: “Does this feel like my home?” Or she asks herself “Have I really lived her this long? So why am I still asking myself if this feels like my home?” She finds this very bizarre. She is happy, she is content; life is very good for her. Neither she nor her husband is jobless, nor are they suffering from any terrible illnesses. They have no children so life is relatively calm and uncomplicated. But where is home then?

I have not been to a dentist in years. I won’t say how long. I ask myself why. I have come to the conclusion that I do not go because of the dentist I was forced to go to as a child. He was brutal. That is the only word that springs to mind. I felt as though I was abused by him. I guess I was, but perhaps not in the usual way. He was so rough; his hands were not the least bit gentle.

Dr. Dmitri and his assistants would stand over me breathing out their strong, bitter, coffee breaths. “Hoooooow are yooooouuu todaaaaay Sarah?” Before I could answer I experienced a sea of hands coming at me and grabbing inside my small mouth.

We had the fantastic opportunity to do a little one night / two day get-away with some of the women from the Writing Workshop (thanks to our lovely host Lisa and her family home out in the country). What a fantastic place to hold a writing workshop and what an inspired and inspiring journeys everyone took with the writing. Clearly I was struck by the need for more space and silence. Here is one of the pieces I wrote from that weekend:

Space - by Nathalie Vachon

Give me a view, pleaseA field divided into sectionsGrass to startDirt awaiting possibilityAnother row of greenA farmhouse in the distanceGive me spaceA sky that ends in nowhereA cloud that trails behind, long behind the othersGive me a farmhouse in the distanceLet it belong to the Smith’s or the Schaeffer’sLet me follow the braided rows in the fieldsLet them take me to a girl in pigtailsTo me, standing on the edge of Lake SuperiorOr filling up a canteen with icy water from a mountain springLet there be space between this car that passesAnd the next

Lately love has not walked in, I simply realized it was always there.Love seemed invisible for a while, lost amid the children’s toys, the critical decisions, the trade offs and compromises. Love took a back seat to efficiency, economy, and purpose. It suffered under the yolk of children’s problems, lack of support, lack of access to true knowing. Love was forgotten in the headlong pursuit of getting it right while getting it all terribly wrong.

PROMPT: Song titles are succinct word gems and can give such wonderful starting points for poems and writings… During the Creative Writing Workshop we combed through CDs (of artists such as Tom Waits, Pink Martini, Feist to name a few) for inspiring, intriguing and captivating song titles… everyone chose one and we wrote from there. Here is one of the pieces from that evening!

Home I’ll Never Be (after Tom Waits)By: Vanessa Ramsey HomeSitting at the dark brown antique dining tableIn my family’s kitchenMy chairFacing the white-washed walls with a purposeful clockAnd a calendarAs if the date and time were of the utmost importanceMy father to the right and my brother to the leftFacing each other as if they were always onto a secret that I didn’t yet knowThe regal chairThe papa bear’s chairGlued to the floor with weights and chains, pulling it down

PROMPT: bring in a gift that was given to you. Write about the gift not only from the perspective of what it is… but also what it is not. This piece was written that night (in the Creative Writing Workshop) and is such a beautiful tribute to friendship:

Red is Best (afterKathy Stinson) – by Evelyn Barsby

It is a deep red translucent cube with metallic swirls that floats about on stilts, above the rest of the world. It is a most precious treasure.This was not a thoughtless gift. You know me so well. This is my favourite colour after all. “When I see beautiful reds, it reminds me of you”. Red is Best, like the children’s story I had read to my daughter at bedtime. It is a symbol of our closeness. It is meant to be for trinkets, but I keep nothing inside as it reminds me of our great friendship. That is the real treasure.I see it every day on my shelf. It holds all the great times we shared inside. It is a memory treasure box. Open it and out pops a skate on the Rideau Canal with us taking turns wearing that crazy fur hat. Open it again and we’re having coffee at the Starbucks around the corner. So many memories….. sad ones too, like when you moved away and when you told me about your childhood.

PROMPT: choose one emotion or state of being (joy, sadness etc.) and write about it from as many angles as possible… (for example: what side of the bed would anger sleep on, what emotion would loneliness have a crush on, what colour would secrecy be?) Here is one of the poems created that day:

Diary of Letting Go - by Kelly Janes

Two hands parting in the windgrey and blue and fuchsia
dancing together
and back to the wallThey say letting go
doesn’t know
A volcano spewing its juice
and hardening again